The 3 Easy (& BEST) Ways to Optimise Your Google Ads Campaign in 2023

Welcome back to my 10 part teaching series, get Google ready in 2023. And now that I've taken you through the process of how to set up all of your Google Ads campaigns, what I want to do now is I want to break down how to go through and optimize your campaigns in the correct way. And let's firstly start with optimizing your search campaigns and the process I'm going to be taking you through. I am going to be using my Google Ads Optimization checklist and you can get your own copy of my Google Ads Optimization checklist for free. And, and to get that, all you need to do is to follow the link in the description below. Now this optimization checklist is a checklist that I've put together and it breaks down exactly what you need to be optimizing in your Google Ads account. But more importantly, it lets you know how often you need to be running these checks, whether you're doing it every 72 hours, every week, every month and every 90 days. Because it is important to note that with Google Ads there are some things you need to check weekly and there are other things like your bidding optimization strategies that you don't need to check until every three months or 90 days. So right now let's get into this optimization process for your Google search campaigns. But just in case you haven't met yet, my name is Aaron young, I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. And remember to get your own copy of my Google Ads Optimization checklist which I'm going to be showing this video. All you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. But right now let me show you how you can optimize your Google Ads search campaigns by for better results. So here is your Google Ads Optimization checklist. And what I'm gonna be focusing on is the three core actions of completing a keyword search review, reviewing your ads and then also reviewing your bid optimizations by audience and demographic targeting. So firstly, for your keyword search review, you wanna be going into your Google Ads search campaign. And when you're in an individual campaign, you then wanna be going into your search keywords and we wanna go down to this search terms and what I'll generally do is I'll go back over the past search and what we want to do here is that your search keywords are the keywords which you've actually entered in that you're telling Google these are the keywords you want to target. But when we go into our search Terms. These are the actual search terms that a user is using to trigger your ads. So there's two processes that we want to be going through here when we're reviewing our search term orders. Firstly, we want to go through and add in any extra negative keywords. So you can see through here. This campaign has been running for over 12 months. So I've built out a really extensive list of negative keywords. At the moment we've got got 847 different keywords that have been added as negative keywords to limit or stop Google triggering ads for keyword terms that we know are not going to be profitable. And firstly, you want to make sure that you're seeing the right columns. So if you want to edit this data, you just need to go up into columns and I've got clicks, impressions, click through ratio CPC and the cost and then also my conversion metrics. And if any of these aren't in here, so you can just go into conversions and let's just say you wanted to add in your conversion value. You can select that and then add it in here if you want to also change the order. So let's just say we want to see the cost first. You can pull that up to here. Now, the reason for why I like to do that is it just makes it easier for me to be able to see the different data. And what I want to be looking at is I'm just going through and scrolling down to see if there's any search terms that a user used which is not relevant for our service. Now, obviously, because this campaign is a quite a mature campaign and we've already got about 850 different negative keywords. There's not that many, but as you can see, I can see one in here. And this is zip Pay because someone has actually searched Skip in high zip pay. This business does not offer Zip Pay. So that's a negative keyword that I would add. And also Rochester, that's in an area which is outside of this business. It's a good sort of hour away. So that's an area that we don't want to target. And then you just keep going down through the list. So that's two that I'm looking at. And we can go through and then add that as a negative keyword and we click save. Now, the one thing that I do want to point out here is that by default Google will add these as an exact match keyword. So that means that Google will only block out if someone actually searches for Skip Bin Hire Zip Pay. So What I generally do is I add them as an exact match negative keyword and then what I'll also do while they're still selected, I'll click add as a negative keyword again and then I'll just remove the brackets. And for this one I actually want that to be done at the campaign level. So I select that there and by doing this is then taking out that whole theme of negative keywords. So it's gonna be a lot more effective. You do just need to be a little bit careful if you're blocking out some search terms which are really similar and you still wann. So just be careful by doing this and if you're a little bit unsure, just continue to add in those negative keywords as exact match keywords. And now the other thing that you do want to be doing is you also want to be looking at any keywords which are performing really well. So I'm going to go through a bit of a longer date range in here because I've already completed these actions just to show you what I mean. And then we're going to filter this down by conversions. As you can actually see, what I've done here is because these keywords were performing really well with the click through ratio. Also the number of conversions, I was adding them as exact match keywords. And the way that you do that is you click add keyword and then you can add them in through there. Now they will be added directly as a broad match keyword. So if you want to go through and change any of these is that as you can see you just need to go through and click edit and change match types and then you can go through and select whether you want to add it as an exact match or phrase match. So that's the first process that you want to be going through and doing and that's the keyword search review and, and that's where we're going through completing that search term audit and adding in extra negative keywords, but also adding in any long tail search terms which are performing well. And I'm recommending that you do that every 72 hours, especially for a new campaign. When I start a new campaign, I would complete that search term audit three times in the first seven days. And now I want to go through to your ad review. And the way that you do this is that you go into your ad groups, goes into your ads and your assets and I'm generally looking at data over the last 30 days. And what you want to be doing through here is that you want to be Having two different types of ads and you're doing a test to find out which is the better performing ad. And generally what I'm looking at doing here is that once we get each ad to around about a thousand impressions, I'll start making a decision. So I can see through here, this top ad has a better click through ratio of 14%. So that's, you know, a 6% difference in a click through ratio. So that's quite a big difference. But then when we go down into the conversion rate and also the cost per conversion, you can see that they're quite similar. So what you can also do is you can also just start looking at the trends and you can see this top one has fast at the top. So if we go the last seven days, you can see this trend is around about the same again. And even if we go the last 14 days now, we can see there's a little bit of an emerging trend with this ad that has the fast at the start. So with this one I'm still looking at a little bit of extra data. So what I would then do is I would then go into my ad review and in the notes section we could say that we did a review on the certain date. So let's, let's say, for example, we're completing this on the 28th of November. We can then make that note saying that we're just waiting to see some further data and then we can come back and review that in another 30 days. And just to show you, when we're talking about the ad copy split test, what we want to be doing is we want to have two ads which are fairly similar. And, and we're only testing one different thing. You can see with this add in here I am doing a test with using keyword insertion, I've got fast before it. And then the other one without that modifier at the end. So you can see here it says fast skip bins, caboolture, other ones that are just saying skip higher. And then this one says fast skip in higher. So we're doing that as a test. And then the other test we're doing with a call to action with the position 3 pinned in saying skip in higher from 265. When we go into the other ad, you can see there's two differences. One, with that keyword insertion, we don't have the word fast in front of it. And secondly, I haven't pinned in that skip in high from 265 into position three. But what I want to also show you in through here as well is that when you've gone through and completed a split test, my recommendation is to not edit the current ad but to pause it and then go edit copy and then after you've copied it, you can then repaste it into this ad group. The reason for that is because that then allows us, we can see through here. We can actually go through and see our old ads that we've already and we can look to see what the differences were. So you can see this is one of the initial ads that we tested and we didn't have that headline pinned into position one. So we weren't pinning in that dynamic keyword insertion into position one. And that was an earlier test that we found out that that is the better performing format for this campaign. So with your ad copy tests you want to be completing this every 30 days and you want to be testing two different ads and then you want to be changing in a new ad copy when you're seeing a clear winner in relation to your click through ratio and also your convers conversion rates. And then the final process I want to be taking you through as a core optimization action for your search campaigns is looking at your bid optimizations by audience and demographic targeting. And to do that you want to be going into your audiences. And what I want to stress through here is that you want to be looking at this over a 60 day or a 90 day period. So let's go back to the start of September. Now one of the biggest misunderstandings about audiences in search campaigns is that I'll see a lot of people who will only add in one or two different audiences thinking that Google will only target those audiences. That is not the case is because unless you're using the targeted option, which most people aren't, in using the observation method, always you're asking for is you just asking Google to give you this data. So you can see from here, when we go down and look at the clicks, you can see over this period there's been a total of 900 clicks and we've had 677 come from our added audiences. So that's pretty good. If we had about 900 clicks, I'd like to get that above 800. But what this allows us to do is this then allows us to go through and look at the data. Now the core bits of data that I'm looking at, so I'm looking at the search and presence share and then I'm also looking at the cost per conversion and the conversions and what we want to be doing Here is that we want to be increasing the bid with two core factors. One, where we're happy with the cost per conversion, but also where we're wanting to grow the market. So in this case, for home and garden, if this search impression share was above, say 55, 60%, I wouldn't be looking at increasing the bid adjustments any further because we already know that for that audience we've already got a lot of market share. But this is the one that I'm looking at in here. And the reason for that is because we've got a cost per conversion which is about 6 or $7 lower than the average. So the whole campaign Average is at 26. This one is at $19. And you can see through here, the search impression share is only at 23%. So that means that within this audience segment, we're only appearing on 23 out of 100 searches. So what I would go through and do is that I would then go through and increase this bid adjustment again, which is going to be increasing the bidding and the focus for this. And then what you can also do is that you can also just do a quick check if there was any audiences that were having a high spend and a really high cost per conversion. So I'm happy with this one. Yes, it's a high spending, but the cost per conversion is just below that average. But if that was like say, for example, at about 45 or $50, I would start to look to lower that bid adjustment. And the way that you do that would just take the down to decrease. So that's how you go through and complete your audience targeting and your bid optimizations for your search campaign. And then you can follow the same process in your age and demographics through this table, down through here. And once again, what you'll be looking at is you're looking at are there any areas that have a high cost and a high cost per conversion. So once again, we would look potentially at this 35 to 44 age bracket and you could do two things. As we're saying at the moment, the cost per conversion, it is a little bit higher up there, but it is generating a lot of conversions and it's got a higher conversion rate. At the moment. I'm happy with that. So I'm not going to exclude it. But if I wanted to exclude that, you can just select that there and then press exclude from your ad group. The only thing I would say with an exclusion is that I'd be looking at at least six to nine months of data before I was happy to exclude a certain demographic group. And I would also be breaking that down and looking at making sure that that trend is following through at every 30 days. So I'll be looking at different points. So I'd be looking not only at the last six months, I'd also be looking at the last three months and then the last 60 days, 30 days, and 14 days just to make sure that that trend is following the same pattern. So there are some of the core optimization actions that you completing in your Google search campaigns. And remember that if you want that full list so you know exactly what optimization actions you need to be completing and also knowing when you need to be completing those options, whether it's every 72 hours, every week, every month, or every 90 days. All you need to do is to follow that link in the description below so that you can get your free copy of my Google Ads Optimization Checklist. Once again, thank you for joining me. And remember to subscribe and also turn on that notification bell so that you know exactly when I release a new Google Ads teaching video and to go through and watch the next video and my Get Google Ready for 2023 playlist. Just make sure you go through and watch this playlist right here. Thank you again. See ya.